Maybe Brenda took something earlier and forgot.

I wasn’t watching her every minute—”

“The trouble is the food’s gone,” Officer Davis put in, flipping back through his notepad.

“He bagged the plates and put them out.

We’ve got the blood, but we don’t have a sample from the actual meal to test against his story.”

And I watched Christopher’s shoulders come down half an inch.

I watched the smallest flicker of relief move across his face, quickly hidden — the relief of a man who believes the one piece of evidence that could hang him is sitting, tied up in a black plastic bag, in the trunk of his car three floors down.

He thought he had destroyed the dinner.